Note (return) — Chapter VII

Later in the year Harold is said to have recovered his earldom through the intercession of Bishop Roger of St. Andrews, for a payment of two thousand pounds of silver, which Munch conjectures may have been handed over to Ragnvald Gudrodson to replace the sum which he had paid to the king for the earldom; and it is true that we hear no more of Ragnvald in connection with Caithness, though he lived until 1229. At the same time, we can hardly believe that Harold, as the Flatey Book says, received back "all Caithness as he had it before that Earl Harald the Young took it from the Skot-king."49 What happened probably was, that Harold Maddadson, who had been stripped by King Sverri of Shetland in 1195,50 was allowed by King William in 1202 to keep part of his Caithness earldom upon payment by its inhabitants of a fine of every fourth penny they possessed. Otherwise his son David could not have succeeded to any part of Caithness, as he undoubtedly did, when, four years later, in 1206, his father's long and chequered career of sixty-eight years in the earldom was closed by his death at the age of seventy-three.